As SA embarks on a R320bn, five-year infrastructure expansion programme, engineering industry leaders are calling for logic to prevail.
"There is no skills shortage yet; but there is a serious underutilisation of existing skills," says SA Society for Professional Engineers executive director Michael Hosking .
Affirmative action is one reason, says Hosking: "We have thousands of engineers who find themselves unemployed and/or retrenched as a direct result of companies being forced to apply various bills to balance their quotas to obtain contracts."
In an open letter to President Thabo Mbeki in October, Hosking wrote: "The various empowerment equity bills, when applied to the engineering profession, are destroying the future growth of SA and leading to the complete destruction of the infrastructure of this country." Hosking's letter was supported by the Society for Black Engineers.
SA Institute of Civil Engineers past president Allyson Lawless says there are few experienced black engineers and technicians, as they began entering tertiary institutions in significant numbers only in the mid-1990s. Underscoring Hosking's and Lawless's view, Engineering Council of SA (Ecsa) president Bob Pullen says: " Hundreds of engineering graduates and experienced technicians are not being utilised properly."
Hosking believes there are tentative signs that things may be changing on the affirmative action front, noting that deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka recently called on the help of skilled whites.
She conceded that government had made errors in its affirmative action drive and said South Africans who had taken retrenchment packages to make way for transformation would be the first recruits in an organised search for talent to drive the country's infrastructure plan . "We can only hope this translates into action," says Hosking.
But it is not only affirmative action that is a problem. In his letter Hosking also noted that the empowerment acts preclude appointment of black engineers from neighbouring countries.
SA blacks are also prejudiced. There are thousands of black learners from technikons unable to find employment and get practical experience needed to complete their qualifications, he said. Technikon students must complete two practical semesters to graduate, but a high percentage never do as companies are reluctant to employ them, says Lawless. One reason, she explains, is that many middle-management engineers are working up to 70 hours a week and have neither the time nor the enthusiasm for mentoring students.
But here things may also be changing. The SA Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors and Master Builders SA say they will employ as many science and engineering graduates as offered to them by the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, which has about 61 000 unemployed graduates of all disciplines on its books.
Another initiative to help students gain the required experience is aimed at bolstering local government, says Lawless. Teams composed of students and young graduates will be assembled and coached by a senior engineer.
SA is going to need all the skills it can muster to meet ambitious infrastructure targets. If all projects, including the Gautrain, soccer World Cup facilities and Eskom's and Transnet's expansion are to be undertaken simultaneously, the civil engineering industry alone will need about 6 000 additional engineers and technicians, says Lawless.
Recruiting engineers abroad is also likely to prove futile, says Hosking of Eskom's hunt for 400 engineers, including many who have emigrated. He adds that given poor salaries in SA, significant tax incentives will be needed to lure them back in any number.
Hosking is also concerned about the low number of people choosing engineering as a profession. Official statistics from Ecsa show that the number of new black engineers registering peaked at 107 in 2000, but collapsed to 24 in 2004. Similarly, the number of white engineers registering peaked at 680 in 1998 and then fell to 71 in 2004.
One reason is that few matriculants have the required marks in maths, science and English, and engineering must compete for those students against other more lucrative professions, such as medicine and accounting, says Lawless.
The result is an ageing population of engineers. Though SA has about 15 000 registered professional engineers, many are retired and about 2 800 have emigrated. This leaves about 8 850 registered working engineers, says Hosking, almost two-thirds of whom are between 55 and 60 years old.
In the civil engineering industry the age factor has resulted in a serious shortage of mid-career engineers responsible for production work .
But it is not only the staffing of new construction operations that is giving rise to concern. According to a recent survey, local authorities have only 8% of people in central jobs with the required skills. Many of these are engineering posts, says Lawless, who warns that local government vacancies could render existing infrastructure "worthless" if action is not taken soon.
